I'm a Chatterbox could stay local in Esplanade

Trainer Larry Jones is open to the possibility of launching I’m a Chatterbox’s 4-year-old campaign in a new $50,000 overnight stakes, the Esplanade, on March 18 at Fair Grounds.

Fair Grounds last week announced a 10 percent purse increase for its final condition book in March as well as the addition of two overnight stakes, one of which is the Esplanade at one mile and 70 yards on dirt for older fillies and mares. The money isn’t great, but if I’m a Chatterbox were to start, Jones could get her season started without having to ship, since there are no regular stakes for I’m a Chatterbox on the Fair Grounds schedule.

“It depends on how she gets ready, but it would give us a little prep in our own backyard,” Jones said.

I’m a Chatterbox won the Silverbulletday, the Rachel Alexandra, and the Fair Grounds Oaks last winter and spring at Fair Grounds, the start of an excellent 3-year-old campaign that made her an Eclipse Award finalist. I’m a Chatterbox got a break following her eighth-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, but now has logged three workouts, stretching from three furlongs to a half-mile in a 51-second drill Monday.

“She just did enough to stretch her legs a little,” Jones said. “She’s finally starting to calm down a little bit. We’re trying to get her fit. She’s settling in real good.”

There’s no certainty, of course, that the Esplanade will attract enough entrants to fill. Ahh Chocolate, another graded stakes winner of 2015, will be considered for the race, but two other prominent older fillies stabled at Fair Grounds, Untapable and Forever Unbridled, won’t start, their connections said.

Meanwhile, Jones continues to be amazed at the similarities between Midnight On Oconee, his top 3-year-old filly this year, and Lovely Maria, who won the Kentucky Oaks for Jones in 2015. Lovely Maria and Midnight On Oconee have run in many of the same races, beginning with debut starts at Delaware, and their parallel lines continued Saturday, when Midnight On Oconee finished second in the Rachel Alexandra Stakes, just like Lovely Maria did last year. Midnight On Oconee raced close to a taxing pace while a few paths off the rail, the wrong place to be on an inside-biased track, but still looked like a winner at the eighth pole before 74-1 shot Venus Valentine, slipping up the fence, came from last for a major upset.

Last year, Jones bypassed the Fair Grounds Oaks with Lovely Maria, who instead went to Keeneland and won the Grade 1 Ashland. “Midnight On Oconee tries to do everything like Lovely Maria, so we might need to go to the Ashland with her,” Jones said. “It’ll be that or the Fair Grounds Oaks. She appears to have come out of her race well.”